


all praise! he's found the awful truth!

by foreverthyme



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: "Jonah's Slow Descent Into Bastardry", Body Horror, But Alas He Does Not Succeed, Elements of Body Image Issues, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Jonah Tries Very Hard to Be a Good Person, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:27:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24780814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverthyme/pseuds/foreverthyme
Summary: “Robert—” Jonah starts, but he finds he cannot summon the right words in the proper order. How to share the long nights of horror? The days of frustrating, futile study? The constant thrum of terrible knowledge, the promise of oblivion on the horizon? “I am… afraid,” he says plainly and unsteadily, before taking a shuddering breath. “All of the time.”
Relationships: (unrequited), Barnabas Bennett/Jonah Magnus, Jonah Magnus & Robert Smirke, Jonah Magnus/Robert Smirke, Mordechai Lukas & Jonah Magnus
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34
Collections: Jonah Magnus Week 2020





	all praise! he's found the awful truth!

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed my tags if you are sensitive to such things. For further information regarding this piece, do see my author's note at the end. Title is from Blue Öyster Cult's "Extra Terrestrial Intelligence," which, I maintain quite plainly, is a Jonah Magnus song.

**_i._ **

Jonah Magnus doesn’t dream.

Well, not anymore.

\--

Here is the dream as he relays it to Robert Smirke in 1808:

He is often a boy again, no older than eight, but sometimes a young man. And, although there is no logic in dreams, he supposes that it must be ‘94 as, when he comes to awareness in the dream, he is initially overwhelmed with feelings of joy and relief. The infection has passed. The smallpox that had ravaged his body has gone, leaving him scarred, but alive.

In the dream, with the unsteady steps of a weakened but healing creature, Jonah leaves the bed in which, with dour and apologetic tones, the physicians and midwives had told his mother he would most certainly die. He pads across the room of his childhood bedroom—“So vivid,” he tells Smirke, “That I can feel the chill of the wood beneath my feet,”—and over to a wash basin in the far corner. The light cascading through the large windows of his family’s manor is always blindingly bright, and his head is always swimming with the same thoughts—plans, and dreams, and hopes for the future of a life newly reclaimed from the edge of the void.

“I go to wash my face,” Jonah says, in a low tone over a glass of expensive port, leaning toward Smirke in the crowded parlor of a gentleman’s club, “And in front of me is a large mirror.” Grand, and archaic, and bedecked with swirling golden trim. “Needless to say, an unusual piece for a young boy’s room,” Jonah adds with a smile that Smirke returns. It warms him. “And in the mirror I can see myself, healing.” Swayed into uncharacteristic openness by the alcohol, he runs a finger across the pock-marked constellation of scars bridging his nose, claiming his cheeks, surrounding his lips. 

But as he is examining himself, he notices that a few of the sores are beginning to bleed. He reaches for a cloth—something to stem the blood—but his eye is caught by a flash of movement beneath his skin. His heartbeat quickens, and he moves his hand to trace the path of what he saw, but as soon as he touches his face, his skin yields beneath his finger. Like a match has been struck, his pock-marks begin to twist and ooze and bubble. He doesn’t even know if he screams. He is caught by the terror of watching, and the horrible realization that his face is so quickly diseased anew that he should be blinded—he can’t even see his eyes beneath his flesh, but he can still _see_.

In desperation—“I must admit I have no waking idea as to why I do this,” Jonah says to his companion, who is studying him intently—he touches his face again, clawing at it. The skin yields beneath his hand, and he finds that, at the slightest provocation, it begins to slide off his face like thick mud. There is pain, and fear, and the starkest sense of betrayal. The bone beneath his flesh is blackened; barely bone at all, but instead more like brittle, scorched wood.

“I wake, then,” Jonah finishes, “with the terrible certainty that I am about to die.” And in a mess of sweat and horror, with a pounding heart, and sometimes a scream that leaves his throat raw.

“And you have this dream every night?” Smirke asks, leaning in to further close the gap between them against the din of the crowd. The troop at the billiards table the room over is howling with laughter, and the continental visitors near the fireplace are caught in their own, exuberant storytelling. Even if it were near silent in the room, Jonah thinks that he would want to be this close to his companion—maybe closer.

“Yes,” Jonah admits, meeting Smirke’s intense gaze. “On occasion, two or three times.” Smirke looks pensive for a moment, thinking intently. “I have every reason to believe it is a manifestation of my own mind, and not of one of your Great Powers,” Jonah is quick to add, “But it is the reason as to why I take an interest in your work. Why I have been so often drawn to the macabre and occult—if it will allow me to understand my predicament.”

“And perhaps put an end to it,” Smirke offers, with a smile that strikes Jonah as deeply kind, already fond.

“Yes,” Jonah agrees, breath catching. “Perhaps.” He casts his eyes away, breaking their connection, and takes a drink of his port. “But I will be truthful, Robert, beyond my own travails, I am interested more broadly in your grand design. The greater theory at work.”

Smirke breaks into a wide grin. “Oh, Jonah, I had so hoped that your intentions were as such.” He leans back and casts a glance around the buzzing room before turning to his companion. “Let us find another room more suitable to this discussion. I have been considering a few new ideas, and I believe that your perspective could be of use…”

\--

“He’s an architect,” Scott had said the evening Robert Smirke was introduced at Black’s on Pall Mall the year previous. Jonah stood beside him, all of twenty-two, studying the man shaking hands across the room.

“An architect?” Mordechai had sneered from Scott’s other side. “How far our standards have fallen.”

“Yes, how dare a man take interest in a career beyond gambling and philandering,” Jonah drawled.

“Certainly,” Scott agreed, in a dead-pan tone. “Damn anyone who was not born a first son.”

Mordechai had snorted. “If an architect is all that Black’s has on offer tonight, I am going to Brooks’ to gamble and philander away the fortune rightfully mine as a first-born son,” he said in a caustic tone his companions had come to recognize as fond. “Best of luck with your careers, gentlemen.”

“Try not to catch anything unpleasant,” Jonah had called after him as he left.

“He will regret that,” Scott predicted, still eyeing the man across the room. “Smirke is really quite something. He’s actually been contracted to oversee construction of the new Royal Mint.”

“Has he…” Jonah had intoned politely, also hooked on Smirke. He was handsome, with quick eyes and strong features, well-dressed, and, from the looks of those he to whom he was speaking, charming to boot. “He can’t be much older than us.”

“Twenty-seven maybe? Twenty-eight?”

Jonah smirked. “Oh, Mordechai will regret leaving. What an impressive climb.”

“Come on,” Scott had said, clapping Jonah on the back. “Might as well do the proper thing. Who knows,” he continued as they began to push forward. “Maybe one day he’ll build you something you like. Like a library, or a library—”

“Or a reading room?” Jonah had offered.

“Or a reading room.”

\--

_1807 Oct 7_

_My dear Albrecht,_

_This missive is a poor substitute for proper correspondence, which you will receive within the fortnight, yet I felt compelled to write you about a most intriguing man I met by the name of Robert Smirke two nights ago at Black’s …_

\--

“My, my, Jonah. And here I thought your affection for me was unique.”

Jonah stops mid-sentence, an excited retelling of Smirke’s recent journey to Paris, to look at his companion, who is leaning against the frame of their bed with a low, devious smile. “What do you mean?” he asks. 

“Should I be hurt?” Barnabas continues, pressing a hand to his cheek. His tone is light, fondly antagonistic. “What will become of me now that you have found a new paramour?” he teases.

“Smirke is not my paramour!” Jonah snaps, redness blooming over his pock-marked face and chest. Barnabas snickers. “Stop laughing! I don’t have _paramours_.”

Barnabas gasps in faux horror. “But, my dear Jonah, what would that make me?”

“A recurring nightmare,” Jonah sneers, crossing his arms.

“Oh, Jonah,” Barnabas whispers, voice dripping with amusement, as he drapes his arm around his companion’s waist. “I didn’t pluck a nerve, did I?”

Jonah rolls his eyes and swallows, lacing his own arm around Barnabas. “You seem to forget I’m not like you,” he hisses, avoiding Barnabas’ dark eyes.

“Of course,” Barnabas says evenly, sliding a hand down Jonah’s waist and between his thighs. Jonah gasps, the faintest hint of a noise that settles deep in Barnabas’ chest. “You’re not like me at all,” he whispers.

 _No_ , Jonah thinks, bitterly, _I am not._ Barnabas Bennett is a rake and a dilettante. He fashions himself in the style of Beau Brummel, fixes himself at the gambling tables of elite soirées and molly houses, makes a life out of such regular depravity. Jonah is—Jonah is—

Jonah is yielding to Barnabas’ hand and baring his neck for his lips and teeth. _I do not make a habit out of this_ , he thinks as they shift together. This is a distraction, a passing fancy of youth, a foolish response to rakish wiles. A weakness and an embarrassment.

This dalliance has already gone on too long. He should have ended it three years ago, the moment that Barnabas brushed his fingers over his wrist as they bid each other adieu after that first introduction. Should have broken away during that feverish kiss at Oxford, denied those greedy hands on so many occasions, been harsher, sterner, not dreamt of him, not yielded to him.

“You academics are so amusing,” Barnabas whispers once they are both limp, pressed against each other in messy, hazy exhaustion. “It is far too easy to fluster you.” Jonah grimaces, burying his face in Barnabas’ shoulder. “And, for all of your knowledge,” he continues, “You never seem to know yourselves.”

He’s right. For now, at least.

**_ii._ **

The patriarch of the Magnus family is a stern, cold man, with little life in him and far less affection. His wife may have had a personality once, but that is simple conjecture; wishful thinking that the brittle, faded woman at his side had once been someone else. Jonah wonders, at times, how it was that he or any of his siblings were actually conceived given their apparent lifelessness, and he expects that he would assume he was a bastard were it not for his striking resemblance to the portraits of Magnus men throughout the ages that line the great corridor of his childhood manor. He shares so many things with them: their dark hair, their sleight builds and fox-like features, their blue eyes a shade so near ice.

They do not share his scars, of course. Those are for him and him alone. He imagines that he might have been handsome, like his brothers, or even delicately pretty in a way, like his sister, Delilah, were it not for their unavoidable presence across his face. He runs his fingers over them absent-mindedly and tries not to think of them as a promise of mortality, the price he paid to outrun the reaper once.

“It’s not as though you’re grotesque,” Delilah, four years his senior, had told him once before they had both left the manor, her for a marriage-bed and him for a university. She had caught him at thirteen, staring into a mirror with troubled intensity. “And a great many people have similar scars. Please don’t tell anyone that I am being kind to you, but I promise you’ll have no trouble finding a wife.”

Jonah’s ears had burned red, and he responded by smacking her shoulder with an open palm. She had gasped and pinched his sides, inspiring him to flee, with her on his heels, past the disapproving portraits of their ancestors. They were found shortly thereafter in an unused parlor, him in a headlock attempting to gnaw at her arm, peals of laughter alerting others to their presence.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, sometimes. How he misses Delilah.

Her promise had eased his nerves for a time before falling by the wayside. Marriage was the primary concern of Ezekiel, the eldest brother, who played his role as chosen son well. For Silas and Jonah, it was an option, of course, although not one stressed so plainly. Silas, for all his womanizing, chose to entwine himself with the Navy instead.

And Jonah, driven always by a voracious curiosity, chose a life of the mind. The great philosophes, learned statesmen, philosopher kings—how they had called to him. The towering stacks of the Magnus family library had cocooned him as he grew; he read before he could even understand half the words on the page. How safe and sweet those memories were, even two centuries removed. He tells Peter about it, sometimes: short fragments of warm recollections and tales of literary adventures that he suspects his partner, inscrutable under the Eye through the fog, does not listen to.

Smallpox bound Jonah to his bed for a long, bleak year, but Delilah snuck him stories, offerings from both the library and her own modest collection. It was her, the books, and the servants for so long. His brothers were making their reputations far from home, in London, or against the French, and his parents were like ghosts. Their infectious fear of the look of death that clung to their youngest child hung heavy in the air, but they themselves stayed far from his bedside.

In their stead, Jonah and Delilah read Radcliffe and Walpole, and the other Gothic tales she loved; and Gibbon’s _Rome_ ; and Wollstonecraft, Voltaire, and Condorcet, which they hid from their father; and works of politics and theory like Burke, and Locke, and Hobbes, Machiavelli, de Pizan; and the ancient philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. And they read them over again as they grew, understood more, traded their thoughts in long letters when they left the manor. Delilah wrote of politics, and literature, and of her boredom amongst the ladies of the gentry, and her growing family, all daughters so far; and Jonah wrote of history, and the science of the mind, and of his research into nightmares, and of his growing interest in the occult.

But that correspondence had ended in 1806. Jonah had watched the demise from the back of the room, unable to look away as his sister twisted and shrieked on her death bed. He remembers it all: the linen between her legs, wet and stained the darkest red; the physician and midwives bickering uselessly as she spasmed and shook; the gaunt horror of her face, stretched with an unknowable pain and terror; the certainty of the end as it came. They had tried to bar him out of a sense of propriety, but he had stood his ground with a sharp firmness he was surprised to find he possessed. He watched her until she fell still, and then he watched her more, willing her to move again. How desperately he had wanted her to move again.

She was buried in a plot on the manor’s grounds. When they consoled her husband, they did so with the emphasis placed on the unborn son with whom she died in tandem.

The scraps of theory, and reviews of esoteric literature, and vague collections of paranormal activity that he had grown fond of sending her pooled instead within his own papers, shared sparingly with friends. Albrecht cared, of course, but he was so often away, and Scott and Lukas humored him on occasion, but their attention was turned toward other matters. They were not academics: they did not know ceaseless call of knowledge, did not feel that deep devotion to a cause, did not by instinct ask or seek the truth with such deep, pure fervor.

But Robert Smirke did. Robert Smirke had theories, and answers, and systems of elaborate classification; plans, and facts, and blueprints. And his eyes when he saw Jonah’s work for the first time—that hunger and delight, which sent a jolt through Jonah’s heart like lightening, alighting every inch of his body. They traded thoughts like wildfire in gentleman’s club, and their respective flats, and libraries, or private rooms where they would meet, sometimes with the others, and speak; devising rituals, and ways to stop them, and schemes for the greater good.

Smirke would open his mouth, begin to speak, and Jonah would finish his thought aloud as though they shared one mind, a circuitous, intoxicating flow of knowledge. The connection was as easy as breathing, and addictive, and their compatriots would watch with curiosity as they would pour information through and out of each other.

“I believe it is a symptom of the great intellectual connection we share,” Jonah had told Scott once in 1811, after a particularly impassioned meeting of the group. But that was not the whole truth.

It was not the potential, insidious effect of the Ceaseless Watcher that was his concern; only weaker, lesser men would fall to such a false god. _No_ , Jonah would think darkly, _it is instead my own senses betraying me._ A manifestation of his depraved predilection, mistaking the common connection between two learned equals as something more.

Why did his interest catch on men, always men, and never a woman? Even Barnabas had women. Men in equal turn, but women, too. If he had never yielded to Barnabas, with whom he still, shamefully, shared a bed with on occasion, would he be free of this torment? Or was this deeper than that, something inherent in his being? Why did he deserve this? Was it not enough to be deformed? Why must he be marked for death in other ways, too?

And marked for death he was—he knew of the men of Vere Street who were hung, and pilloried, and the others whom he heard of mocked, and beaten, and killed so savagely. And for what, in the end? For what?

Jonah wakes up screaming, again, the nightmare still on his lips. It is a dark, cold morning in 1814, and, once the heat of his fear leaves him, he finds himself shivering in his bed, knees to his chest and face in his hands. His exhaustion wears at his self-composure, and he cannot help but choke out a handful of bleated cries. Nearly thirty and well-established, a man of some respect and renown in society, the academy, and, he suspects, although it does not warm his heart, amongst some of London’s more refined monsters, yet still plagued by the nightmares of a distant childhood. _Pathetic._

“How could a dream so familiar still inspire such abject terror?” he had asked Smirke, once, pliant from alcohol, at the close of a long evening of discussion.

“Perhaps there is still a Fear in the dream that you have not conquered?” Smirke had offered, leaning back in his chair. He looked at Jonah with such intensity, such care. Jonah swallowed.

“But the dream is so clearly marked by the Corruption,” he had said, furrowing his brow. “And that Great Fear holds no power over me.” His words were heavy with shared meaning: the first avatar they had stopped, a midwife made of moths and disease. She had brought such death and horror to the countrysides she haunted. Smirke had hesitated when the time came, frozen at the sight of her as the creatures that lived within her flesh crawled, one by one, out of her mouth. Jonah had grabbed him by the wrist, pulled him back, and ended her reign of terror with swift, certain retribution. “I suspect that is what troubles me the most.”

There was silence, then, for a moment. Smirke was pensive. Just as Jonah felt ice form in his throat, the fear that he had misspoke somehow, Smirke began: “There may be a simple answer to your question,” and then “Is there another Fear lurking within that dream?”

“Well—” Jonah had started, indignant for a moment before considering. “Perhaps,” he conceded, voice low. “You may have a point.”

“The End can take many forms,” Smirke said softly, with a gentle smile. “As we well know.” Jonah grimaced. “It is a natural fear—and for yourself, with your past, it is sensical that it would haunt you so.”

“A nuisance,” Jonah had drawled with a huff, careful to keep his voice level.

“It is what marks you as a member of the living.” Smirke shot him a wry smile.

Jonah snorted. “ _Perhaps_.” He bit his bottom lip and avoided Smirke’s gaze. “But it strikes me as quite unnecessary to be reminded constantly of that which cannot be conquered or outrun.”

Smirke had chuckled fondly. “Quite unnecessary indeed, Jonah. But consider it like so—you and I know better than most that fear alone is not the enemy. Fear has the power to keep one alive. It tells us what to avoid, how to act—even before our conscious minds can decide. The Powers may act as parasites, but that does not change the value of fear itself.”

Jonah caught Smirke’s gaze and narrowed his eyes. “Go on.”

“Although I am certain it offers nothing of value to your ability to get a restful night’s sleep,” Smirke began with a wink that Jonah rolled his eyes at, “You have been given a unique gift. Death cannot be outrun, no, but it can be conquered—and you are already doing so.”

“As far I am aware, I have not made any pacts for immortality,” Jonah sneered.

“Well, I certainly hope not,” Smirke said with a fond look. “But you are conquering death. The work you do—that we do. We are making an impact beyond us. We are doing great works. My buildings, your research—it will stand for generations. Think of the lives that our work will save—that it has already saved. That is the only way to conquer death.”

Smirke had been so earnest, so confident. His gaze had been so sure and unwavering, his smile so open. Jonah could have fallen into that look; been drowned and made alive again in the discomfort of being known forever. “Perhaps,” he had said, swallowing an emotion he did not often feel and preferred not to understand. And then he had turned over Smirke’s words for months and months.

He lay staring at the ceiling of his bedroom in 1814. Thinking: the march of progress—the inevitable pull of civilization forward, towards a more humane, scientific future—the Empire, and the burden of responsibility, and his place in the world as a learned man. The Great Powers, and their followers, and their promises to derail humanity’s eventual, nigh inevitable, triumph. His own neck under the heel of another creature’s boot. The horror of knowing the truth. He blinks.

What gift could he give that would be more powerful than to tame the Fears? How better to immortalize oneself than by ensuring the culmination of humanity’s best instincts by destroying their worst? To keep the Fears balanced against each other, like Smirke’s best theories had suggested—to find equilibrium, and free them all from endless torment, forever and ever.

And so Jonah says “Robert! This is our chance!” when Smirke is offered the contract to Millbank Prison.

**_iii._ **

Smirke is an architect. He builds, and plans, and adjusts. Jonah watches, weighs in, offers his own specifications. He follows instinct as he does, devoted wholly to the balance as he is, and it will only be many decades on that he will discover the splendid horror of what they have built. But for now, he thinks: _This is our greatest offering to humanity’s survival. Our finest hour._

And, in the meantime, he collects. “I am in the process of establishing a foundation for the research of the paranormal,” he begins to tell people. “I already have a modest collection of artefacts and sightings. And it is of great interest to me to expand that collection. If you believe that you have anything to offer, no matter how trivial—please do not hesitate.”

Barnabas had snorted when he heard the call, shared in a circle of gentlemen at Black’s. “Oh, Jonah, come now,” he had said later, standing too close while the party focused their attention on the billiards table. “Are you not already enough of an eccentric?” His tone was taunting. 

Jonah had clenched his jaw. “There are worse things,” he had said, lowly.

“Like what?” Barnabas asked, stepping closer with a smirk. 

Jonah had shot him an icy look and bore ahead, stepping away and towards the others. “Oh, come now,” Barnabas had called. “You know I’m only teasing.” He repeated it later, while they lay entwined in Jonah’s bed. “I’m only teasing. I didn’t mean to strike a nerve. I know how much your work means to you.” His voice was soft. 

“You have no idea what my work means,” Jonah had hissed before biting his tongue. He closed his eyes and drew a slow, deep breath. “I am sorry,” he said, finally, while Barnabas traced a light pattern through his hair, along his jaw, over his scars. “I am simply… I am trying to—”

“It’s alright, Jonah,” his partner crooned in a voice sweet and comforting. There was a knowing smile in the lilt of his words. It ground at Jonah’s nerves, but he leaned into the touch regardless. And as he drifted to sleep, he pretended that it was another man, with the chalk-stained hands of an architect, in Barnabas’ place.

\--

Three nights.

 _The first_ : a dark summer solstice, thick with heat and rain, 1816. The book from Ulrich’s tomb, on loan from Albrecht, lay open on Jonah’s desk. _Did Albrecht not say they were in Arabic?_ he thinks, as he reads their ancient lines in clear, if archaic, English. _Surely this must be a mistake._

He falls asleep in his study, slumped over his desk like a student, hand curled against the tome’s open page. When he goes to look in the mirror of his dream, he finds cast back at him an unwavering Eye, sickly green in color. 

Jonah awakes with a start; a new fear on his tongue. He recoils his hand and grasps it, glances at the book as though he has been burned. It was only a matter of time, he supposes, before he was called by a power so plainly. But still—what horror!

 _The time for renewed vigilance is at hand_ , he thinks, wringing his fingers. He must tell Smirke. He must stay aware.

Sleep does not find him again that night, which he spends instead pacing across the floor of his study, in time with the rain, staring at that damned book.

 _The second_ : a pleasant autumn evening, 1818. The ballroom of the Magnus Estate is warm and full of life. Smirke waits until Jonah is done entertaining a group of assembled guests before saying “I congratulate you again,” and clinking his glass against the other man’s. “I must admit that I have been so taken with what your Institute will do for our work, that I fear I have failed to express my sincere joy at your continued personal success. And, as it would appear, for throwing the party of the season.”

Jonah huffs, but beneath it lies a wide grin. “You flatter me,” he says. “Lest I remind you that my success is our success.”

“Certainly,” Smirke replies. “And let’s hope that this will bring more of it.” His words are celebratory, but there is a layer of heaviness. Millbank Prison stands. And thus far, all it has wrought is horror—with little effect on the greater good. The guilt crawls up their throats like weeds. Surely their goals will come to fruition. Perhaps with more research, more focus.

The two men drink.

“Have you by any chance seen Mordechai?” Jonah asks. “His contributions and connections have been so crucial to this endeavor. I’d like to toast him, but I fear I have been too busy playing host to make note of his arrival.” His tone is jovial, but there is an edge of concern.

Smirke shakes his head. “No, I have not. Nor have I heard of his appearances in polite society at all as of late.” He matches Jonah’s tone.

“A shame. Although I suppose he has always been aloof,” Jonah offers.

“Of course,” Smirke echoes.

The two men drink.

The Reverend’s daughter, Laura, joins Smirke’s side, like she does so often now. The conversation with her in tow is polite and tame. After the toasts, and the dances, Jonah bids them both adieu. They see each other next at the wedding. Laura shines with youth and beauty, and Robert cannot take his eyes off her. Jonah toasts their love, and then he drinks, alone, and sleeps the same. 

The Eye stares back, as it does many nights. And, as always, Jonah averts his gaze.

 _The third_ : a winter night marked by a chill so cold it hurts to breathe, 1820. “We must not panic,” Smirke says, stoking the fire in front of them. He and Jonah sit, wrapped in blankets, in Smirke’s study. Laura sleeps peacefully in the room over, belly swollen with child.

“I am not panicking,” Jonah lies.

“Fine,” Smirke says harshly, continuing to prod the fire. It sparks and burns bright enough as is. “I am.” His eyes are wild and dark with sleeplessness.

“It is natural that this would happen—” Jonah starts, voice smooth.

“Natural to betray your friends?” Smirke snaps, turning to face Jonah with the hot iron in hand. Jonah bites his tongue. “Every man I chose to bring into my circle was chosen with confidence,” Smirke continues, stabbing the tip of the fire iron back into the flames. “Trust that he had the concerns of the greater good in mind, that he would be strong enough to resist temptation, that he would be able to—to—” Smirke throws the iron down with a loud clang against the hearth. “To recognize the inherent evil and depravity of making a deal with a false god!” he hisses, near a shout.

Jonah winces. “Robert,” he says softly. “You’ll wake Laura.”

Head in his hands, bent toward the heat of the flame, Smirke shudders. Jonah’s hand twitches. Should he? Would he—if he could touch—

Smirke slides his fingers down his face, revealing wet eyes and a quivering lip. “Jonah,” he starts, voice hoarse. “It’s all going wrong.”

With that, Jonah places a hand on his shoulder. He is strong, and warm to the touch. “Mordechai’s fall is a disappointment, but—”

“It’s not simply Mordechai’s betrayal!” Smirke hisses. “All of it—Jonah, our plan. I think so often of hubris now. I—I have a child, Jonah, and what a world to bring them into?”

Jonah swallows. He is so tired. “I don’t know,” he says, finally, retracting his hand. His voice is near a whisper. 

They stare at the fire as it crackles and pops. In their shared silence, there is a moment of respite before Smirke says “You’re taking this all so well.” His tone is sharp and taunting, accusatory. He glowers; reminds Jonah briefly of a wounded animal ready to strike.

Guilt shudders in Jonah’s chest. “Robert, I’m—” he starts, but he finds he cannot summon the right words in the proper order. How to share the long nights of horror? The days of frustrating, futile study? The constant thrum of terrible knowledge, the promise of oblivion on the horizon? He digs his fingers into the arms of his chair and speaks instead without thinking, stilted and painful. “I am not.” He can feel the soft wood beneath nails. “I am… afraid,” he says plainly and unsteadily, before taking a shuddering breath. “All of the time.” His voice cracks.

Smirke is less wound, but studies him carefully. “Jonah,” he says, and his voice wavers with emotion. “Are you still being called?” he asks, so quiet as to nearly be drowned by the sound of the fire.

Jonah takes a sharp breath. “Yes,” he admits raggedly. “But I have not listened,” he adds truthfully. “I have always resisted.” Smirke looks satisfied at this answer, but miserably so. He casts his eyes back toward the fire. Jonah furrows his brow. “Have you?”

“Have I what?” Smirke snaps.

“Been called?” Jonah’s voice is unsure, delicate.

“Yes,” Smirke says, his tone forceful. “Of course, I have.” He simmers.

There is silence again. It is harsher, sharper.

“What are we going to do?” Jonah asks, finally.

“Promise me,” Smirke says, dragging his eyes from the fire to meet Jonah’s. “That you will not fall. I can promise you the same in turn. Our work—we can always start over if we must. But you must promise me that you will not fall.”

“I promise you,” Jonah replies. And in that moment, for the last time, he means it with every inch of his being.

That night, Jonah sleeps beside the fire. In his dream, the Eye stares. Jonah stares back. He means it as a challenge.

And he awakes naturally in the morning sun, well-rested and content. There is no hint of nightmare in his memory. He blinks.

He does not know what it means.

**_iv._ **

Laura Smirke gives birth to a daughter of the same name the first thaw that year. Robert clutches her small body tightly and wishes sincerely, and for the first time, for ignorance.

His efforts to control the Fears stop and start like a gasping creature as the decade begins to unfurl itself. He finds himself at the drawing board, hands covered with chalk and ink, scribbling furiously, and then for months he is instead entertaining at polite soirées, shaking hands with those who know nothing, and accepting accolades for work that only he and Jonah understand in its totality. It is a miserable distraction, at first, and then… it is respite. Pleasing to be torn away from such stark reminders of his failures.

Millbank pulses with misery. Robert Smirke finds himself one of the most lauded architects of his age.

Jonah is there, at first, to congratulate and toast, and then… he is not there at all. “I have been so deeply engrossed in ensuring that the Institute has a healthy naissance,” he writes, once. “It has proved an immense difficulty to travel regularly to London as of late.” 

It is true, mostly. There are so many statements to catalog, so much practical organizational work to be done, so few sources of funding, and an abundance of obstacles. It is absorbing in its totality—but it is a direction. A purpose. Robert Smirke has his awards, and his wife, and Jonah Magnus has this: the Institute, a tangible way to make the world a better place by shining a light on its darkest facets. The organization that bears his namesake, that must outlive him and serve humanity beyond his own mortal life.

He writes this to Albrecht, who has proven so adept at helping him manage everything.

And he stares back at the Eye every night.

\--

Mordechai returns to the gambling table. The first time he does so is a pure surprise; his presence is announced only when he grasps Jonah, on a rare visit to Black’s while on business in London, by the shoulder, smirking with cold fondness at the look of shock and horror on the face of his friend. Mordechai’s touch is chilled, and his skin is pale, and the air of the Lonely about him makes Jonah’s skin crawl, but his donations have been so crucial, and Jonah is so curious, and—well, they’ve been friends for long enough, haven’t they?

They spend the night gambling and drinking. Mordechai is unworldly, and those around them pay the two wide berth, but he is… unchanged. Brusque, and aloof, yet daring and full of humor. Quick to anger, but quicker to remove himself from a situation he does not care for. 

_Or remove an offending party to another realm of existence entirely_ , Jonah muses, the thought a low reminder as the night passes. In Mordechai’s presence, although he finds himself in short time laughing and joking as though he were still a student, he cannot shake the feeling that he is less of a man and more like prey.

At the close of the evening, standing in the temperate air outside of the gentleman’s clubs on Pall Mall with pipes in their hands and the last words of warmly told stories on their tongues, Mordechai turns to Jonah. “Have you at all planned to kill me?”

Words and reactions, so many of which might be appropriate, elude Jonah. “What?” he asks, undignified. It is his first instinct to suspect that he has misheard his companion.

“I suppose you would not tell me,” Mordechai says, casually. “But I was simply curious. Call it a vice.” He shoots Jonah a wry grin. “You and Smirke had made such names for yourself. You failed to kill anyone truly important, of course. But you made your mark.”

Jonah’s heart quickens in his chest, but his lips are set in a cold, straight line. His jaw tenses, and he finds himself grasping the pipe in his hand. _Such a dalliance has been a mistake,_ he thinks, resolutely, _and for my stupidity I am now surely going to die._

Mordechai licks his lips, as if savoring the taste of Jonah’s fear. “Oh, calm down, Magnus,” he sneers with a mean grin. “Honestly,” he says, harsh but familiar— _this is meant to be friendly_ , Jonah realizes dully. “And here I thought I might impress you. But I see the Eye hasn’t made you any less dramatic.”

“I—” Jonah starts, nearly in relief but still tense with anxiety and, now, sharp with confusion. “What do you mean?” he asks, voice less sure than he’d prefer.

His companion barks a short laugh. He is about to speak—even begins to make a sound—before he stops himself and stares plainly at his friend instead. “Hmm,” he says, pensive, raising an eyebrow. “You are honest, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?” Jonah repeats, the urgency in his voice rising.

“Oh, my old friend.” Mordechai casts him a knowing smile. “If there is still time to sway you, then, let me say this: my god is good to me, Magnus. And the Forsaken would be good to you, too.” Jonah swallows. “I tell you truth when I say this,” Mordechai continues, eyes bright with cold certainty. “You are the loneliest man I know.”

There is rage in Jonah’s chest, but it is smothered, leaking out only in the twitch of his jaw and the nervous grasp of his hands around his pipe. A stark cold is seeping into his bones, and there is a lethargy that hangs over his shoulders. His heart aches, forlorn, not so much summoned but instead revealed in full, painful glory. The emptiness at his side, absence in the space that Smirke had once occupied before the advent of his wife and daughter. Unholy desire in its place—Barnabas, and his fantasies, and those things that stop him from taking a wife himself. Loss, dripping like the blood down Delilah’s thighs. Abandonment as pale as his parents’ faces, and as dark as the coffins he buried them in the autumn prior. Regret at the tip of his tongue. Fear that grows with each passing year.

The Eye, staring back, night after night, with no anchor on which to cling.

“When you make your choice,” Mordechai says, his voice pulling Jonah back to his place on Pall Mall. “Do let me know what you decide.” He studies Jonah again, finally, from head to toe. “Although, I must admit—,” he takes a puff of his pipe, “—I suspect you are already spoken for.”

And then he is gone into nothing.

Somehow, in a daze, Jonah finds his way back to the room he is renting. He shuts the door in haste, slides against it to the wooden floor, and stares ahead, eyes unfocused, at the lifeless space before him. His head is swimming; thoughts vague, like water between his fingers, but he wills himself to grasp at them, to form them, to come to a conclusion. But all he finds he can do is stare and stare and stare ahead. 

\--

_15 May 1823  
  
My dear Jonah, _

_Have not received letter dated most recent, under the assumption, of course, that you have sent it. I beg your forgiveness for such a forward note but felt the need to inquire as in our decades of correspondence I have not known you to not return correspondence in less than a fortnight. It has been a long spring without word from you. Hope this note reaches you in good health and faith and do take care to send word of yourself._

_Yours, as always,  
Robert_

\--

Nights and days without sleep, or food, absorbed completely in his work. When Jonah realizes, he smothers his concern. “I am not so old yet,” he says, “that I have lost my stamina completely.” It rings hollow in his empty study.

Instincts and hunches that strike true each time; a sense that he knows the answer before he does. “The mark of an expert,” he chuckles, offering a sly smile to the visiting academic seated across from him in his office. The academic offers his own forced response. There is something about this place he hates, and he wants to leave.

Answers and opinions pulled effortlessly from any interlocutors. Each query posed, Jonah begins to find, is responded to in absolute truth and with full detail. “How advantageous,” he tells himself, “to command such respect and commitment.” He almost believes it. 

\--

“When did you stop having nightmares?”

“Hmm?” Jonah turns, lazy in the sun of the balmy late August morning, to face his companion. They are leaned languid against a stone bench on the grounds of the Magnus Estate.

“Your nightmares,” Barnabas repeats. He is dressed in the latest fashion, as always, not even fading beneath the warm morning sun. “You can’t tell me you’ve forgotten them. You know, your lifelong recurring terrors? I’ve been holding you through such dreams since we were boys. And by god, you’ve been sleeping through the night since my arrival nearly a fortnight ago!”

“Oh.” Jonah considers. “Yes, I suppose I have.” He offers Barnabas a polite smile.

Barnabas snorts. “You ‘suppose you have’? Jonah, my god, is that all you can muster? I’ve watched you scream your throat raw on more than one occasion, and now that it’s over you are so subdued!” He laughs. “Has all of that esoteric research finally helped you find a cure for bad dreams?”

“In a sense,” Jonah says. “In another, I suppose I simply grew out of it.” He forces another polite smile.

Barnabas snakes his arm across his waist, eyes twinkling with mischief. Jonah, placid, does not lean into the touch but allows it. “You academics are so amusing,” his partner says with a fond smirk.

“ **How so?** ” Jonah asks. There is electricity in his words.

“You are so possessed by your singular purpose,” Barnabas says, quickly, breathless, devoid of the fondness and softness he had intended to wrap around his answer. “You fail to notice or acknowledge anything beyond yourself. And, if you are forced to, whatever you may be addressing never holds the gravity of meaning or respect that it is due. You are amusing and aggravating in equal measure, and I have kept you in my life to see if you will ever pull yourself free from your own obsessions and join the rest of us in the world of men.”

And then: “I’m sorry,” he says, eyes wide, hand pressed tight on Jonah’s waist. “I did not mean that. I do not know why I said that.”

Jonah considers. He snakes his own arm around Barnabas’ waist, pulls him closer. “I suspect you did mean it,” he says plainly. Barnabas stiffens. “However, it is of no matter. I have always appreciated the truth over a pleasant lie.” He lays his head against his partner’s shoulder. “You should have told me years ago,” he says. “I may have even loved you if you had.”

There are thunderheads on the horizon.

\--

 _23 December 1823  
  
_ _My dear Jonah,_

_Although I have appreciated the renewal of our detailed correspondence these last months, and you must know plainly that I have always had the utmost respect for your perspective and thoughts, especially in regards to my own work, I must express my deepest concern for some of your recent writings._

_I cannot help but sense a hesitation on your part regarding the viability of balance in my latest designs, and, though I am not so convinced of my largesse to not assume initially the problem is inherent in the specifics, I do grow concerned that your hesitations are more encompassing in nature. I have included responses in full in the following pages of this letter that I do ask you consider but please allay my fears as to your commitment to our endeavor._

_Yours, as always,  
Robert_

Jonah picks at the edges of the letter idly, alone in the quiet of his office.

Balance, their work suggests, is an impossibility. And Smirke would realize that, too, if he was willing to see it.

 _But what, then?_ Jonah knows is the question. He has paced his room, and his office, and the halls of the Institute, the stacks of the library, the artefact storage, the collection of boxes and statements that is turning into some sort of archive. _What other option is there?_

He sits, fingers at the edges of the letter, staring at the wall. Thinking: the futility of mankind—the idealistic dreams of philosophers—the crawl of the Lonely down his back, and his friends’ unceremonious falls, and the midwife’s moths, and Delilah’s contorted form, and the men of Vere Street, and the way his flesh would yield beneath his fingers in his dreams. The Great Powers, and their followers, and the inevitability of their conquering. His own neck under the heel of another creature’s boot.

The horror of knowing the truth.

\--

Barnabas’ bones arrive in a carefully wrapped parcel on a bright summer morning from Kent. There is a note attached; it reads:

_I see you’ve made your choice._

_How terrible_ , Jonah thinks, ghosting a finger on the side of Barnabas’ eye socket, across the ridge of nasal cavity, against his teeth. The skeleton is incomplete, but there is enough, and what remains is beautiful: bleached pure white, and unnaturally cold, and nearly glistening like snow in the early light of day.

“I didn’t know,” he says, eyes focused on the bones. He takes a sharp breath. “I am sure you are quite cross with me, but you must understand. I did not know. I found your letter, and it was in my heart to help you.” He pauses. “But you must understand, Barnabas, I didn’t know. I stayed my hand, yes, but if I had—surely, you must understand. This was not my place to interfere.”

Jonah leans forward, transfixed on his partner’s eye sockets. “In how many ways were you warned? Of Mordechai, yes, but of such living generally? How many times? Barnabas, please.” He swallows, thinks. “I beg you not to take my inaction as a perverse form of punishment. But you must understand. This was not my place. I—” A pause. “What sway do I have, in truth, over the man who funds my work? For what reason would you ask of me? My knowledge of the esoteric, yes, to—” _Save you._ “But Barnabas, please.” He steels his jaw. “Have you not critiqued me in the past for living not in the world of men but instead ideas? For my lofty eccentricities? Then let this—let this serve as an example of my pragmatism.”

He stops. Swallows. Places his hands against on the skull before him. “I am sorry. That was… unnecessary. I hold nothing against you. Please understand, Barnabas. I have always felt the deepest fondness for you.” His fingers twitch against the bone. “And, although it is of no consolation to you, your bones will serve researchers for generations. If anything, your—" _Death. Barnabas is dead. These are his bones._ “Whatever impact your life would have made, this will increase it tenfold.”

There are eyes at his back. Jonah stops. Blinks.

 _What am I doing?_ he thinks. His hands shake. A man is dead, and not just any, but Barnabas. Barnabas, who had been at his side for years, a constant companion, a friend, a lover. Who held him so kindly, and regaled him with such tales, and kept him so balanced for so long!

And, even beyond that—a death at Jonah’s hands! He could have stopped it. He could have. “I didn’t know,” he says, again, and again. Repetitive as he waits for the dawning of a horror that does not come. There is no feeling.

He takes a deep breath.

“Oh,” he says, aloud, to himself. _Why fight it?_ To stay pure for nothing and die like an animal? To fight forever, powerless, and never truly live? Why not just…

There are eyes at his back. So many eyes. He turns on a heel, and although he is still alone, he cannot shake the feeling as though he is on a great stage. The audience is laid out before him. He blinks, looks, cannot _see_ —but he can feel. And he feels them all applaud in rapture, as though he is a great performer stepped newly in front of them. The act they’ve all been waiting for.

“Fine,” he spits, cutting off their cheers. “Is this what you want?” The applause starts anew, louder, more raucous.

There are eyes above him, too. Heavy, oppressive. Approving.

“ _My god is good to me, Magnus_ ,” Mordechai had said.

Religion had never been for Jonah. His mother had been devout, of course, and he had gone through the motions. But the deists and philosophes he and Delilah had read so young had wound their way around his sense of devotion, chained it. There was never a God for him. But this was—

Totality. Totality above him, so great and immense. And everywhere. And everything.

His knees shudder. He grips the side of the desk to stay upright. The audience cheers. He knows what he must do.

The mirror in his office is nothing like the ornate spectacle of his dreams. It is small, and made of fogged, impure glass. But here, now, it is bright and clean. He drags himself to it, each step heavy beneath the gaze of the Eye. “Is this what you want?” he hisses, casting himself into it.

What he sees in its reflection is—himself, alone in a room. Hair undone, bags beneath his eyes. An average-looking man with pockmarks in his late thirties, in need of rest. Ranting and raving to nothing and no one. The weight is gone. _I am ridiculous_ , he thinks. _I am going insane_. _Perhaps it is true_ , he wonders for a dizzying moment. _There is no such thing as the supernatural._ This—his whole life—has all been one long, horrible mistake. He is still ill, in bed as a child. The recurring nightmare has not been a terror in sleep but instead the simple act of living every single day. He will wake up, and he will finally die.

He blinks. And the face in the mirror smiles back at him. Jonah touches his mouth, set straight in a line. His reflection winks, holds up its own hand, and, with a hooked finger, digs into its flesh. The skin yields, and oozes, and peels away. There is nothing but wet bone beneath, red, and glistening. And the eyes all come rushing back.

Jonah can see himself from all sides, suddenly, impossible. His sense of self is torn away from him, swept into the sea as though he is drowning, and in its place he can see: each angle, and all angles at once, and through the eyes of others, alive, and dead, and not yet born—Smirke, and Rosie, and his father, and Peter, and Fanshawe, and the early hominid from which he was descended, and Jonathan Sims, and Mordechai, and Melanie King, and his great-grandmother, and Martin Blackwood, and Delilah, and Elias Bouchard—all forming a mix of confused signals, and thoughts, and faces, and feelings, and hatreds, none that he could ever understand at once, or remember, but enough that in the same maddening breath and moment he knows himself _too much_ and _not at all._

He falls to his knees in rapture. The crowd screams, and applauds, and screams again.

From the mirror above him is the Eye, so bright, cast down at him. Omniscient, and knowing, and if there is a god it is that god and that is God to whom he is looking and who is looking at him in all his disgusting, imperfect, human senselessness. But he can offer nothing else, and so he offers all he has. Each secret, each thought, each horrible cruel pronouncement and desire and reaction and yearning. And he gives, and gives, and is _seen_!

And he is Known! So totally and completely. A cacophony of Knowing. And he is Claimed! And he Chooses! So totally and completely. That he thinks he must be burned alive by it, known and unknown, and over and over and over and over—

Jonah finds himself in his childhood bedroom. In that, he finds himself, a man, in his childhood bedroom, and in that bedroom he finds himself, a child, with the weakened legs of a healing creature, peering at his scarred face in the mirror. Familiar. Jonah steps forward.

His child self turns at the noise, and gasps. And Jonah wastes no time. He grasps himself, the boy, and holds his head in place, toward the mirror. And his small hands claw, and he twists, but he is too weak to fight it. “Look,” he says, and it is the two of them, and the Eye, and they see everything, and they scream, and scream. The audience joins them. And they all scream. And he sheds his skin. And is born anew.

Jonah wakes on the floor of his office. It is quiet, and peaceful, and outside of his open window he can hear the soft sounds of a warm summer night in the country. He is… fine. Untouched. The bones are on his desk. Everything is in its place.

But. He takes a deep breath. His god is watching. And Jonah is not all-knowing, not even close yet. But he… _Knows_!

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was initially conceived of as part of a far larger work. I had hoped to create a "fanfic within a fanfic," but alas the greater fic itself will likely remain unfinished. As this week is a holiday (Jonah Magnus Week 2020), I figured that now was as good a time to share it as ever. 
> 
> The majority of ALL PRAISE! was written in November and December of 2019. As such, many commonly accepted aspects of 19th ce bastards fanon are absent. I think this is most notable in relation to the characterization of Barnabas Bennett. Regardless, I hope that you have still enjoyed this work! 
> 
> Do follow my fandom Tumblr, mydearjonah. You can also reach me on my main Tumblr, napoleon--bonaparte, where I post history, politics, and pretty pictures.


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